Category Archives: Environment

It is amazing how some of the smallest things on Earth are very important. Phytoplankton capture CO2 in the ocean and use the carbon to produce mass and release the oxygen. Wikipedia says between 50% to 80 % of our atmospheric oxygen is produced by the phytoplankton. Other reference use about 50%. Phytoplankton have chlorophyll to capture sunlight, and they use photosynthesis to turn it into chemical energy. Really no difference from that of terrestrial plants.

*Protists are not animal, nor plant nor fungus. An Amoeba is classified as a protist, for example.

Equally as important to the replenishing of the oxygen is the following:

“Phytoplankton are the foundation of the aquatic food web, the primary producers, feeding everything from microscopic, animal-like zooplankton to multi-ton whales. Small fish and invertebrates also graze on the plant-like organisms, and then those smaller animals are eaten by bigger ones.”

Phytoplankton can also be the harbingers of death or disease. Certain speciesof phytoplankton produce powerful biotoxins, making them responsible for so-called “red tides,” or harmful algal blooms.

This graphic does not look like the one you have probably examined before. Those graphics were normally global CARBON budget. This one is global CARBON DIOXIDE budget. CO2 weight ratio to C is 44 to 12. To convert, multiply the C number by 3.67 to convert to CO2.

This chart would suggest that most of the O2 comes from the “land sink” rather than from the “ocean sink”. Error bars on the land sink are big. No big deal, as I suppose most of this is supposition anyway.

The followingxxxxxchart is interesting:

The chart balances emissions—fossil fuels and industry plus land use changes against sinks –land sink, ocean sink and the atmosphere. The ocean is absorbing more CO2. The land sink, since about 1950, has really increased, reflecting the “greening of the planet”.

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It is said that the plankton to krill to Blue whale is about as close a food chain connection as one can find. The Krill eat phytoplankton and the Blue whales eat krill. The blue whale can eat as many as 40 million krill per day or around 8,000 lbs. daily in order to power its massive body.

“Plankton” is Sponge Bob SquarePants’ big enemy. Just another form of harmful species.

Over the years, Al Gore’s Nashville house has been a topic of discussion because of the enormous amount of electricity it uses. Frequently it is mentioned as evidence when calling Mr. Gore a hypocrite. According to a posting on TheLid.com titled “How Al Gore Fooled The World Into Paying For His Giant Carbon Footprint” new data shows little has changed over the years.

The new data about his Nashville house includes:

The past year, Gore’s home energy use averaged 19,241 kilowatt hours (kWh) every month, compared to the U.S. household average of 901 kWh per month.

Gore guzzles more electricity in one year than the average American family uses in 21 years.

In September of 2016, Gore’s home consumed 30,993 kWh in just one month – as much energy as a typical American family burns in 34 months.

During the last 12 months, Gore devoured 66,159 kWh of electricity just heating his pool. That is enough energy to power six average U.S. households for a year.

From August 2016 through July 2017, Gore spent almost $22,000 on electricity bills.

For appearance’s sake, the former VP with an unreleased chakra paid an estimated $60,000 to install 33 solar panels. Those solar panels produce an average of 1,092 kWh per month, only 5.7% of Gore’s typical monthly energy consumption. So, Gore is using tons of fossil fuels–by himself.

Al Gore owned 4 homes but since his divorce, one of them may now belong to his ex-wife.

The posting on TheLid.com goes on to discuss how much money Gore has amassed since his term as the Veep was over.

Gore and all the Hollywood types that tell us how to live in order to save the planet, havea motto, “do as I say, not as I do”.

Rebloging Dr. Roy Spencer’s posting which can be reached by clicking here.

The season is starting slowly; however, it may surprise us. I was in Tampa, Florida on 24 October 2005. For a day or so, it looked like Tampa might be the landfall. In the end, it made landfall south of Tampa, fortunately for my son whose house we were fixing up to sell.

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July 31st, 2017 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

Wednesday of this week will mark 4,300 days since the last major hurricane (Category 3 or stronger, 111-129 mph maximum sustained winds) made landfall in the U.S.

That’s almost 12 years.

The last major hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. was Wilma striking Florida on October 24, 2005, one of several strong hurricanes to hit the U.S. that year. The unusual hurricane activity in 2005 was a central focus of Al Gore’s 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth, in which Mr. Gore suggested 2005 was going to be the new normal. As you might recall, Gore went on to receive a Nobel Peace Prize for helping to raise awareness of the severe weather dangers from global warming.

Instead, the bottom dropped out of Atlantic hurricane activity after 2005. The “drought” of landfalling U.S. major hurricanes continues, and as seen in this graphic from WeatherStreet.com, no hurricanes have yet formed anywhere in the Atlantic basin in 2017, despite the forecast for an above-normal hurricane season:

After 31 years working for E.I. DuPont de Nemours here is my understanding about “ozone depletion” — the warm-up act for anthropogenic CO2-induced “global warming”. Even the proponents of human-induced “ozone depletion” are starting to realize that the thinning of the ozone layer is a natural phenomenon that just waxes and wanes.

Ozone (O3) is produced in the stratosphere by the intense solar radiation causing photo-dissociation of the di-atomic oxygen molecule (O2). The oxygen singlet (- O) is a powerful oxidizing agent and readily reacts with another O2 molecule to yield ozone. Ozone is not produced during the dark polar winters and its lowest point is in the early spring. The ozone layer is renewed by the sunlit polar summers.

Molina and Rowland published in 1974 and their core premise is that heavier-than-air chloro-fluoro carbons (CFCs) convect upwards using a “one dimensional diffusion model”, where they photo-dissociate due to ultraviolet radiation in the band of 2000 Angstroms to yield ozone -destroying chlorine and bromine. Molina and Rowland also stated that CFCs do not dissolve in water, so they are not scrubbed out by rain at lower elevations. However, it is known that organo-halogens adsorb on dust particles and aerosols which are scrubbed out by rain in the troposphere. Finally, volcanoes emit CFCs as well as copious amounts of hydrofluoric acid (HF), hydrochloric acid (HCl) and hydrodrobromic acid (HBr) which carry up to the stratosphere. (Ian Plimer, et al). See “Heaven and Earth” by Ian Plimer, University of Adelaide. There is always some equilibrium presence of these molecules, in trace quantities.

The picture below shows in color the concentration of air pollution in North America. The lower US seems to have three notable pollution sources according to the color scale shown in the lower left of the photo. Roughly locating these three sources would be in California in the Western US, Chicago area in the Great Lakes region, and Baltimore to Boston along the I 95 corridor.

Now for a look at Asia and the middle East.

According to these maps, the above one shows where most of the air pollution originates.

The following from the Science website is some information about these pictures. While the text is from November last year, the picture map shows the situation in real time. These are for July 16, 2017.

China’s air is notoriously toxic: Each year, it contributes to the premature deaths of some 1.6 million people. Concerned about how such pollution was affecting his family, Beijing-based data scientist Yann Boquillod founded AirVisual Earth, an online air pollution map that uses data from satellites and more than 8000 monitoring stations to display global air pollution in real time. The AirVisual Earth interactive maps prevailing wind patterns and shows color-coded concentrations of PM2.5—airborne particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter that can penetrate deep into the lungs. Users can zoom in, tilt, and spin the globe for better viewing. The air pollution visualization wascrafted “so people really understand how bad it is,” says Boquillod, who hopes an informed citizenry will pressure governments and communities to clear the air. AirVisual also delivers 3-day air pollution forecasts for 6000 cities to smartphones, and it recently began selling low-cost monitors people can use to track indoor and outdoor air pollution. “People want to share that data,” Boquillod says.

The pictures are screen captures. You will have to go to the Science site link here to move around the globe.

I am not a fan of the 2.5micron particles stuff. Another study suggest that there is no evidence for it being considered a vehicle for killing massive numbers of people. See Junk Science links to see why I say that. This is a good map for chasing black carbon and other aerosols.

The New York Magazine posted, “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells. Some observers think that this posting is so bizarre that it must be a parody; meant to be something like a posting on the ONION.

I have been planning to discuss some information about CO2. When I read Part V of Mr. Wallace-Wells essay subtitled “Unbreathable Air”, I had to make it part of the discussion to illustrate why some consider the New York Magazine’s posting is a parody. Wallace-Wells notes:

“Our lungs need oxygen, but that is only a fraction of what we breathe. The fraction of carbon dioxide is growing: It just crossed 400 parts per million, and high-end estimates extrapolating from current trends suggest it will hit 1,000 ppm by 2100. At that concentration, compared to the air we breathe now, human cognitive ability declines by 21 percent.

Where is he getting his information? Let’s look at what experts have to say about CO2 .

CO2 is an asphyxiant gas and not classified as toxic or harmful. The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienist say that the TLV is 5,000 ppm. The Threshold Limit Value (TLV) is the level which a worker can be exposed to day after day for a lifetime without adverse effects. Concentrations up to 1% (10,000 ppm), will make some people feel drowsy according to some sources. Levels of 70,000 to 100,000 may cause suffocation. So, Wallace-Wells’ value of 1000ppm is truly a laughable statement. Perhaps anyone who reads the “Uninhabitable Earth” will experience a cognitive decline of 21%.

The Manhattan Contrarian posted “Looks Like Global Action On “Climate Change” Is Dead by Frances Menton. There is not much in the posting that I have not already covered. However, there are two things that do standout that I want to pass on. Menton’s posting is relative to the members of the G 20, that have just reaffirmed their support for the Paris Agreement in the Summary statement at the end of the G 20* meeting. The US did not join in the reaffirmation.

Menton notes that Russia’s intended reduction is based upon their CO2 emissions in 1990 before they collapse in 1991 of the Soviet Union.

“Then they closed down all that inefficient Soviet industry. According to a graph at Climate Action Tracker here, by 2000 their emissions were down by almost 40% from the 1990 level, and they have only crept up a little from there since.”